Somogyi Múzeumok Közleményei 14. (2000)

Knézy Judit: Németek és magyarok a Dráva mentén

419 Germans and Hungarians living along the Dráva river JUDIT KNÉZY The paper deals with resettled population of German and Austrian origin of two villages, famous for tobacco growing along the Dráva river, Szulok and Bares, namely, with their situation, manners and role while living encircled by Hungarian villages for about two hundred years. It treats relations between Szulok with purely Catholic, German inhabitants settled in 1750 and Bares with a less homogenous German-speaking population where Lutheran and Catholic families from Austria were settled among Hungarian and Croat groups. Connections between the German groups of the two villages were promoted by craftsmen, mostly Germans from Austria and Bohemia whose products met the settler's taste. Products of different craftsmen often showed great similarities while being very different from those used by Hungarian and Croat population. Before WW I marriages between inhabitants of the two villages and, moreover, of a third one, Mike, occured more frequently than after the war. In the second half of the nineteenth century Bares began to develop at a spectacularly rapid race with marked urbanization and industrialization, however, this progress was checked by the new frontiers desingnated by the Trianon Peace Treaty. Szulok kept its former economic level with tobacco growing, colt rearing and selling of calves. Its one-time agility, however, was over; sales were entrusted to merchants. Blue-painted pieces of furniture, costume, and several features of religious life, calender and family customs were similar both in Szulok and among the group of inhabitants in Bares which had become pruely Catholic. The paper also examines economic and other relations with the surrounding Hungarian villages with mostly reformed population. Inhabitants of all the neighbouring villages produced rye, maize and, from the 1770s also potatoes on the sandy soils and so did German population. For tobacco growing they leased land from Hungarian farmers, or undertook share-cropping on third- or fourth-part basis to get money for buying land. When skilled work was needed, they generally commissioned crafstmen from Darány or Istvándi, besides those from Bares. In addition to local and nearby markets, markets in Szigetvár also attracted many farmers from this area. In the last part the author gives a selection of opinions and notions of different ethnic groups about each other and themselves.